I looked at Jackie, who was thankfully already working on her project with Jasmine, so she wasn’t shooting me dagger eyes. She had on a bright green sundress with a low-cut front that showed off what she had and I didn’t. Her hair was perfectly curled down her board-straight back; she had really good posture. My heart tugged for her, liking a guy for forever and him never liking you back. That had to feel crappy.

Straightening my turtle shell, I looked at Izzy. Even though I felt sorry for Jackie, I did like that he hadn’t fallen for a girl with a bad personality just because she looked like a Barbie.

I didn’t like that she didn’t like that he was friends with me, though.

She thinks he likes you, dummy, Mean Me said. So, she’s not that smart, because there’s no way. He’s easily the cutest guy here.

Axl’s cuter.

Not even close. Anyway, don’t get any ideas, because you’re a loser who thinks she’s being haunted by her dead best friend, so that makes you a crazy loser. Izzy could never like you, not if he knew the real Tess.

I wanted to shout at the voice in my head that I wasn’t even thinking that way about Izzy, that I’d just met him, that I was still too sad about Colette to even think about a boyfriend. But Izzy brought me back to reality.

“So, do you want to draw first, or do you want me to?” he asked, messing with his hair. We were going to spend today and tomorrow on a charcoal drawing project. Karly had lectured on adding detail to faces earlier, and we were supposed to apply what we’d learned. At least drawing portraits was something I could do, and it would keep my brain from spinning about Colette and stop me from demolishing my fingers.

“Draw,” I said definitively. “I mean if that’s okay?”

He shrugged. “Sure. How do you want me to be?”

While it would be easier to draw his face the way he was sitting now than at a three-quarter angle, he’d be staring right at me, and I definitely didn’t want that.

“You can just sit normally,” I said. “Or, um . . .”

I looked around the classroom to see what other pairs were doing. The room was buzzing as eleven sets of campers chatted quietly, most of them already being productive, except for Axl and a boy named Tim, who were mopping up a cup of water Axl had knocked over. The steady noise of the classroom was occasionally interrupted by the screeching of metal against the labyrinth floor as people shifted in their chairs to get the right angles.

“Oh, uh, I guess just look at your phone,” I said.